It was Singapore International Jazz festival again. Some of you may have seen a small selection of photos on my Singapore Night Live's Facebook page, here's the blog post with my top selection.
This is the third time in a row that I attended and the second time I observed change. The most positive one was the crowd. People came out in big big numbers to watch foreign as well as local stars.
There was some disappointments to deal with, which in all reality is no change. As there were technical challenges last year at the side stage, there were programming challenges this year.
A constant was the time crunch, felt mostly by Seun Kuti and Joss Stone. Continuously under pressure having view of three massive screens with time counting down Stone finally received the following message "You are beautiful but your time is up".
The, in my opinion, equally beautiful musician and stage performer, Seun Kuti
had to do with an increasingly nervous crew member who tried to get his attention to pass on the message that it was time for the "wonderful light and water show". Seun did not care. He had a message of his own "black woman, I never fear your strength, I never say you're weak".
Then of course there were the comments "that this is not jazz" and "that is not cool".
Considering, and I looked quite hard, none of that disappointment was permanently visible. People thoroughly enjoyed whatever was being brought on stage. From the spectacular jazz music of Hector Infanzion
to the lovely loose, relaxed and entertaining show of Candy Dulfer.
It was all great fun.
As if it was all planned around the international women's day, women in many cases took the lead. Kicked off on Friday by Singapore's own Vandetta,
followed by the colorful Nai Palm,
the aforementioned Candy Dulfer,
and Joss Stone,
Natalie Williams
and Vanessa Haynes
2/3 of the Incognito vocal power house, and finally topped by the absolutely superb appearance of Omara Portuondo with the Buena Vista social club.
At age 85 she completely owned the stage and what was going on there. Too frail to walk but strong enough to dance.
"Live is good"!
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